Currently, there are a number of call processing systems that allow calling parties to place communication connections to called parties only when the called party agrees to pay for the connection and only when the called party is deemed creditworthy. Many of these systems also impose other restrictions on such connections. For example, in the prison environment, when an inmate desires to place a call there might be a restriction on who the call can be placed to. There might be other restrictions, including time of day, number of prior calls, willingness on the part of the called party to receive (and if necessary, pay for) calls from the calling party. In many situations, such calls can only be placed to certain individuals and in other systems calls can be placed to anyone not on a restriction list for that inmate.
Restriction lists can, for example, include the names (phone numbers) of victims of the inmate, witnesses, law enforcement officers, court personnel, and the like. Because the called party must pay for many of these calls, those who have indicated by their past refusal to accept collect calls, or those with poor credit histories or which otherwise present an unacceptable risk to collection, may also be placed on the restricted list or otherwise cause the call attempt to be blocked. Such initial validation logic has been found by the present inventors to block about thirty percent of call attempts in a typical inmate calling scenario. Of the remaining call attempts, after the calling service provider has expended resources in validating the call attempt, a high percentage are not connected for one reason or another. Reasons include: the called party does not answer, the called line returns a busy signal, the attempt reaches an answering machine or answering service, or a problem exists with the called number (misdial, disconnected number, etcetera).
Under existing systems, when the calling party is prevented from actually connecting to the called party when placing a collect (reverse charge) call, there is no ability to leave messages for the called party. This is so even if the called party has an answering machine or answering service because such machines or services do not have the ability to accept charges for collect calls. Also, since the call processor handling the calling connection does not detect a voice (“live”) connection, the call is automatically terminated (or in some systems, not actually fully completed) before a message can be left by the calling party.